


Wenn Engel Hassen

by kyanve



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Child Abuse, Child Death, Gen, Human Experimentation, Needles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-07
Updated: 2013-02-07
Packaged: 2017-11-28 12:28:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/674398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyanve/pseuds/kyanve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short, two-part thing.  Just after a certain adoption, Lancia's family gets a couple of visitors that're en route to check out some loose ends and unanswered questions - namely what the Hell happened to the Estraneo.  </p><p>There are a few bits of headcanon gnawing here, since Reborn's "That's what I'd thought/been wondering" reaction to Ken's story implied he'd already known about the Estraneo, and the possibility there were survivors, as well as a certain other illusionist who's pretty much implied to've been meddling in things off camera pretty much forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There'd been a few days of commotion. As much as the extra baths bothered Ken, 69 didn't mind that; he'd just been listening, staying quiet.

Visitors - someone important, a different Famiglia; there'd been a few beginnings of attempts at putting him through some kind of etiquette hoops, until Lancia had pulled the man who'd been taking charge aside to point out that the boy was young, quiet, and behaved enough that it wouldn't matter if he didn't know protocol - it wasn't like he'd be talking, anyway. The meeting was with the Boss, Lancia and some of the others wouldn't be part of it unless the visitors decided to stay long enough to be social.

His attention picked up more when he heard "Estraneo" mentioned in one of the conversations he "wasn't paying attention to" - the other Famiglia was powerful, and was apparently wanting to know what had happened.

He'd been thinking over if there was a way to slip off to try to follow when that particular conversation walked out of earshot when he realized Lancia had come over - and clearly noticed.

"Don't worry about it; you're safe here - we're not going to let anyone take you."

He'd looked up, uncertain, but nodded; getting taken somewhere else would make things worse, and maybe mean them getting separated more before they could get away - or worse.

Lancia smiled, sitting next to him with one knee folded up to his chest. "That's the spirit. Besides, it's the Vongola; they're usually pretty decent people. It'll probably just be a bunch of formalities."

*******************************************

They were outside when the visitors finally arrived; the original idea had been that he'd be inside, and they didn't have to be there at all...

But all the bits and pieces had gotten his attention and unease - one of the most powerful Famiglia there was, possibly taking an interest in them? Would it be to get rid of the last survivors of the Estraneo, or try to lay a claim to the Estraneo's "weapons"?

He'd managed to get away from Lancia easily, there one moment, "vanishing" the next, using the simple dodge; if nobody saw him as "there", nobody would catch him and take him back inside, and he could get a look at the visitors without anyone the wiser. The Boss and the rest of his close men had gone to the roof, to a large open square pad marked out; a little cheating with a "ladder" that was only there for him, and he'd gotten up on a higher ledge next to an antenna to see better, still masked as "not there" when the helicopter came in and landed.

The pilot stayed with it, and three men came out - one in the lead, someone a little older, suited - didn't seem particularly impressive. The two behind him were hanging close, like guards; he frowned as there was a problem with his vantage point - as the helicopter landed and people moved to meet it, it'd ended up that their backs were to him, and somehow the two "guards" attending seemed more interesting. The one on the right, all he could really pick out was a black suit, black hat, with a yellow dress shirt. That one moved like a predator - not hostile, but pure predator.

The one on the left was young, keeping a bit more of a nervous-stiff than formal, slightly messy hair, and otherwise utterly nondescript, but there was something he couldn't put his finger on that bothered him; as if there was something he should recognize that wasn't clicking right. The more he squinted to try to figure it out, the more it bothered him, and the more he drew blanks on what was wrong; nothing looked off, no weapons, no signs of anything weird besides that sense of certainty that something was weird. While the predator was going along with the formalities of the greetings as smoothly as the man they were escorting, that one was fidgetting more and more; he caught a nervous laugh from the odd one at something he was asked, then the predator shaking his head and making some quiet chide that he couldn't make out from where he was. Restless, younger, and everyone - him included - was acting like he was inexperienced and high strung, with nothing still to explain that odd sense of something wrong.

The greetings wound into gestures towards the door from the Boss, and the whole procession started to move inside; the lead visitor and the predator walked in easily, naturally -

The odd one paused, hesitating with glances at the armed guards around him -

And a glance slipped in, looking a couple moments too long, up at the ledge where he was, hidden under the illusion of nothing there. There was something there, a sense of something searching, slipping through the illusion; he froze, not even breathing, and inched a little closer to the antenna, as the "glance" stopped right on him for a moment, with a split second of something - not really a big visible change in expression, but that sense of something off taking shape as a dragon in sheep's clothing, that something that slipped through the illusion closing around him under it.

Then the man frowned, shaking his head and waving off a question, going inside; right back to fidgeting and with the sense of "wrong" vanishing as if it'd never been there.

Not someone young and high strung.

Another illusionist.

He crept with the antenna between him and the door they'd gone through to think about this; that wasn't a normal group, and he wasn't sure what this was going to mean for them. He'd been rolling around what he'd seen trying to decide what to think of the pieces with enough focus that it took a minute to realize that Lancia was on the now mostly empty roof, looking frazzled and worried, asking the helicopter pilot questions and gesturing - even though he couldn't hear it very well, what he could catch mixed with the gestures was enough to figure it out. "about this tall, quiet kid"; the answer was negative, and Lancia walked away from the helicopter to stand on the edge of the helipad with his hand in his pockets, thinking.

Then he turned, and walked over to the door the others had gone through, walking around the walls of the stairwell, looking up thoughtfully and studying the roof; he shook his head with a sigh, then walked along the railing, running a hand along it carefully - then walked to the other side, doing the same to the railing on that side of the roof.

Another moment of looking speculatively at the dark tile roof over the stairwell, and he shook his head again, walking over to the antenna mount with a slightly worn look and a faint, beleaguered smile. He scanned it, not seeming to see anything, then glanced back at the helicopter - checking that nobody was watching.

"I can take a minute at the stairs, in the door, just look at the scenery, go back to the room where it's nice and quiet - not so many people." It was said in a voice just barely above a whisper.

He waited another couple minutes; for one of those the boy thought it over - he wanted to find out what was going on, but he didn't really want to be around that other illusionist, and he wasn't sure he wanted to be here when they came back.

The second minute he spent getting back down the way he'd gotten up, keeping the "not here" illusions up.

On the third minute, Lancia turned and walked slowly back to the door, still looking around as if watching for something; just as he'd said, he opened the door and stood in the doorway for a minute or two, looking around one last time, more than long enough to slip past inside.

**********************

On their way back to the helicopter, there was the usual courtesies - but Reborn stopped before he got in, for one offhand question back at the Boss.

"You're sure there were no survivors?"

The older man shook his head, frowning. "None. Whatever happened, nobody could've survived that."

One raised eyebrow, but he shrugged it off, tipping his hat before he climbed in to close the door behind him. Leon moved from the seat to catch his arm and climb up to his shoulders as he sat down, the lizard curling around his neck as he buckled in.

The new guy shifted; good, competent kid, but maybe a little too nervous about people for this. "You don't believe him?"

He shook his head. "Something's not right about that story - whatever killed them, wasn't the kind of thing that just goes away, and he's not the type to be careless about something that dangerous."

"Bothered me too, to be honest, but..." The pilot slowed his flight check, waiting for the one in charge of the trip to finish; it didn't seem like a good conversation to interrupt. "He's not the type to be careless - they're not on alert. Not sure why he'd be lying about it, but who or whatever was responsible, they're confident it's not a threat." The representative gestured, one hand making a lazy circle in the air. "Knowing the Estraneo? The 'cause' deserves a medal, and they're probably worried the bastards have some ally surviving that might go for revenge."

There weren't any further questions, but there was an awkward silence, with the "Strongest" watching the compound fall away out the window, lost in thought.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reborn and the 'pet' illusionist going through the Estraneo compound. Reborn's PoV because the other one decided to Teal Deer about EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN THING including the path leading up to the house and the likely history of the house and -

It took a few passes for the pilot to find the helipad hidden in among the trees near the compound. The surface part was only a middling size manor house in the woods - old, vine grown, and intentionally left to look abandoned, even without any illusions to mask it remaining. 

There was only maybe a five minute walk; the pilot stayed with the helicopter while they went in, the young illusionist following close behind him. 

. Their allied family had sent people in, but said they hadn't wanted to stick around; his mission was to get a better look around, and considering who they were looking into, the best way to defend against Mist users was to have one with you - the kid was good, if a bit jittery. Either someone caught up to the Estraneo, or there'd been in-fighting.... Or they were playing dead. One way or another, everyone needed an answer. 

Leon curled around his neck closer as they reached the door, hanging cracked open; no signs of movement, no signs of booby traps, and the place smelled like a slaughterhouse. He glanced back to the illusionist, who shook his head; no illusions. 

Just inside the door, there was a body slumped to the floor - a man in a white medical coat, his throat torn out, blood splattered across the entryway. He knelt down, waving to the young illusionist to keep watch; the kid had a hand over his face, giving the body nervous glances. There were a couple places it'd been flaked and scraped when it was drying; likely their allies... More interesting were a couple handprints and footprints that had to've been made at the time - small, maybe seven or eight year old, but the shape was distorted, animal-padded, with point-marks at the fingertips, with a few small handprints to go with it.

He'd heard stories of some sun-flame families that went animalistic, but never quite that far...and from the look of the man's throat, the little werebeast has been the cause of death; a pistol was still hanging in the man's hand - he pulled it out of dead fingers, setting his own gun down to check it over - empty, and no sign of bullet holes or any blood that wouldn't have come from the body.

A kid killing someone in medical gear who'd been carrying an already-emptied gun. 

He frowned; he didn't like the look of where this was going.

Even with the dead quiet, he kept his gun ready, making a sweep of the house first; no sign of anyone living - but a few dead, mostly serving staff at his guess, shot or stabbed; there was less sign of struggle and more signs of panic or confusion, some that'd tried to get away, others where his best guess was pleading or letting it happen; messier than he was used to for executions, but from the looks of it, a grown man, and the bullet wounds would've been about the same caliber as the gun in the hallway. The second floor had a few suits. A couple looked like suicides, and there was one that he recognized as the Estraneo's boss - shot himself in the head after disturbing things on his desk going for a gun in the drawer, while from the looks of it his two guards...

Had shot each other.

"Well... We've got a kid with fangs and somebody a little on the sloppy side with mind control techniques so far."

The Mist user grimaced. "Any clue if they're still around?"

"Not sure. Doesn't look like much has been disturbed, though." He was making a closer check on this room; sure enough, there was a safe set in the wall, normally hidden, now open and empty.

Well, there was one set of special bullets they'd want to find. 

He backtracked a bit from there, leaving the subject for now; he'd seen what must've normally been a hidden passage with stairs down, door slid open and left that way. On a closer look, there was a keypad on the inside - with a matching one still hidden on the outside.

It'd come open from the inside.

The lights were still on in the stairs down; while the main house had been a fairly comfortable small mansion, this area was sterile, plain walls, tile floors, harsh lights, with a medical smell of chemicals and antiseptics tinging the reek of blood and gore. The central room at the bottom of the stairs was like the floors above, only messier; maybe four, five people, dead with whatever sharp was handy buried in each other's throats, doors open to other hallways. 

The lower compound was much bigger than the surface, complete with hidden living quarters that were just as sterile as the rest of it, although a few looked like they'd been at least given some effort of comfort - and a couple of those had corpses, people killed in their sleep or draped off the bed as if they'd woken up and been moving. A supply room with another dead body, someone in scrubs with needles from multiple IV's jammed into his arm and no sign of a struggle; the bags on the stands were haphazard, a couple labelled with different chemicals; one was a potent sedative, another was simple immunoglobins, and a couple others were labelled as nutrient formulas.

Their rogue mist user was vindictive and definitely a little on the sloppy side. 

That hallway must've been a staff wing, and had a few more of about the same, although some were more spectacular - he had to admit, he hadn't seen many mist users that could hold control to get someone to disembowel themselves with a scalpel, and judging by the look of almost awed horror on his mist user's face, neither had the kid. Honestly, he was starting to get impressed the kid hadn't gotten sick; he'd had a few messy field missions, but he was barely 20, and this was hitting a special level of fucked. There was what seemed to be a guard, down with a weapon that hadn't discharged, a row of fine needles in in the back of his neck; they were simple, solid, fine, thin metal shards that hadn't gone deep enough to kill and didn't seem to be coated in anything. He knelt down staring at that for a minute, before picking up a stray off the ground and handing it to Leon; the chameleon wrapped his tongue around it cautiously, pulling it to his mouth to taste, then spit it out with a small noise and turned a funny shade of blue; he frowned further. 

The illusionist looked between him and the chameleon with an eyebrow raised.

"Rain flame, concentrated out enough to kill someone; that makes three behind this." The needles were angled upwards, to boot, as if whatever'd delivered them was on an odd angle - 

Either some kind of device, or there was another kid involved. 

There was more backtracking to check the other hallway - a short stretch with a couple of closets and a small changing room, then another door hanging open with enough of a smell to start bothering him, as used to it as he was.

The main room of that wing was carnage and chaos; blood and bits of viscera sprayed across the walls and ceilings, at least eight bodies that'd been drug across the floor and piled, with another "suicide" on top; frames on the wall with documents were hanging askew, a gurney knocked over. The piled bodies were all grown adults, some more mutilated than others; it was off to the side that bothered him more.

Four other, small bodies; someone had actually taken a couple sheets off the folded cart, bloodied as they were, and laid them over the corpses. He holstered his gun, taking a moment before he lifted it up to check; kids, all between five and eight years old, single gunshots, neat kills. They were wearing variations on hospital gowns, and some of them had odd stitches, bandaging, and marking-tattoos, needlemarks. 

He let the sheet drop, standing up and starting to feel a little queasy, now. 

By the time he'd gotten stock of that wing, it was maybe twenty dead kids, all neat kills from someone full height, all showing signs of dissection or alteration, all the bodies moved, or covered, in some way that'd imply an attempt at respect; human experimentation, something went wrong and they'd been regaining control by putting down the projects. The dead adults he was finding were often in pieces and maimed. There were lab rooms dotted all down the hallway, medical equipment and other things he didn't quite recognize off the top of his head - more like something he'd see in Verde's lab, if the scientist ever went completely unhinged. 

One of the lab rooms showed the most signs of a fight - more of an actual scuffle, three people that were dead to a fourth that hadn't gotten far out of the room; tools scattered off a table, bandages and drawn-up syringes that were never used, all of it improvised weapons; a scalpel to the throat on one, another with some kind of tool with thin claws broken in his neck from an angle that'd have to've come from someone on the table, the third had a gun - probably where the bullet wounds on the fourth had come from - and a couple of the other needles stabbed in and emptied around his collarbone and the lower part of his neck.

And that, he'd bet, would be where their mist-user with the mind control started.

The oldest he'd seen with signs of experimentation was maybe twelve.

Three kids. 

He shook his head, walking out with a hand on his hat brim. "You can relax, I'm pretty sure they're long gone." 

The illusionist just nodded, glancing back down at the body collapsed in the hallway.

God knows where the kids had gone, but he was pretty sure their plans were "anywhere but here". 

There was another open door at the end of the hallway, a small, narrow spiral staircase; at this point, it was just the sake of thoroughness that kept him going, making sure there weren't any other surprises, or survivors. 

It was one room; one half of it looked like specimen tanks, body freezers, and jars, preserved bodies and bits and parts. 

The other half had a few sets of life-support equipment and a couple full tank setups; more of the same, only the worst cases - kids that didn't even look human in ways that they wouldn't have even functioned, a couple where whatever was wrong was more subtle that'd been kept hooked up to machines. 

Most of them had the cords on the machines that'd been keeping them alive slashed where they trailed away, maybe three feet off the ground; the two or three that looked like they might've "lived" without the machines had pinpricks, empty syringes dropped nearby, from the looks of it intentional overdoses on some of the sedatives.

Mercy kills. 

He scrubbed his face, and turned to walk away; his illusionist had wandered a little, looking over some of the specimen jars.

He'd have to ask Tim where they'd found this kid; he knew people ten years older that would've thrown up by now, and God knows he wasn't planning on eating himself for a few days. 

"C'mon; we're going to need to make a few sweeps of the woods - we've got three kids with no clue what they're doing that're angry, scared, and dangerous as all fuck. If our friends know where they are, that's great, but if they missed any of them, I'd rather find them instead of finding out about them after some bystander ends up dead for spooking them."

The illusionist snapped out of whatever train of thought he'd been caught in with a short, quiet nod.


End file.
